TIM MAGUIRE | NEAR AND FAR
“In a sense, all pictures are impossible: they have a double reality. They are seen both as patterns of lines,
lying on a flat background and also as objects depicted in a quite different, three-dimensional, space. No
actual object can be both two- and three-dimensional and yet pictures come close to it.”
R L Gregory, Perceptual Illusions and Brain Models, 1968
Both the still-life based paintings and the light box landscapes in this exhibition incorporate (my own)
photographic sources, techniques of mechanical reproduction and digital technology, and deliberate painterly
description undermined by imperfectly controlled erasure through splashed solvents. The resulting objects
are like push-me-pull-yous, heading in two directions at once, aspiring to coherent representations of reality
while breaking down into abstract gestures and random marks. This paradoxical nature, being at the same
time both an illusionistic description and a concrete accretion of paint on a flat surface, is of course a
fundamental characteristic of all representational painting, but is reinforced here by the scale of these
paintings, which resolve when viewed from afar and dissolve when approached.
The paradox is further enhanced by the ambiguous physicality of the paintings’ surfaces. They are the
accumulated residue of vigorous activity, and the traces of large brushes and the splashings of solvent reveal
the dynamic nature of their making. Yet their physicality is belied by the smooth canvas and the thin paint
applied in transparent glazes, and on close inspection the textures can prove to be as much illusory as actual.
In the case of the light boxes, this physicality is both further enhanced, and negated. As with the paintings, the
imagery is separated into layers of primary colour which are then reconstituted in progressive layers of
transparent colour. The light box process introduces a further degree of separation, as the colour layers are
painted independently, and then scanned and superimposed digitally before being printed onto transparent
film. In the process the scale is enlarged. And so the traces of the hand are brought to the fore while their
actual physicality recedes.
Tim Maguire, 2014

Right: Untitled 20140102, 2014, oil on canvas, 160 x 233 cm (detail)

Untitled 20140201, 2014, oil on canvas, 180 x 400 cm, diptych

Untitled 20131201, 2013, oil on canvas, 160 x 233 cm

Untitled 20131001, 2013, oil on canvas, 180 x 400 cm, diptych

Untitled 20140101, 2014, oil on camvas, 160 x 233 cm

Untitled 20131202, 2013, oil on canvas, 182 x 162 cm

Untitled 20140102, 2014, oil on canvas, 160 x 233 cm

Untitled 20140203, 2014, oil on board, 76 x 76 cm

Untitled 20140202, 2014, oil on canvas, 76 x 76 cm

Cook Park, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

Bawley Point, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

Wollombi, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

Kinglake 2, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

Kinglake 3, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

Kinglake 4, 2014, Duratrans on light box, 135 x 210 cm

TIM MAGUIRE
1958
Born in Chertsey, United Kingdom
1959
Immigrated to Australia
Lives and works in France, the United Kingdom and Australia since 1992
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS